The Ledger Opens
Good evening, and mind the cucumber sandwiches.
How many people in a comedy about honesty are made up? Two. Each is invented by a gentleman who wants an excuse to leave the room, and each is declared dead on stage. One of them turns out to be real, in a way.
Full spoilers ahead, ending included. This is Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, in three acts. I read every line and kept a ledger of each deception, with the act, the liar and the person fooled. I count eleven. Then I counted words, names and one handbag, and I will tell you how I counted each one.
The Text and the Count
The text is Project Gutenberg ebook eight forty-four. Its title page says A Trivial Comedy for Serious People, and its cast list is the St. James’s Theatre opening of February fourteenth, eighteen ninety-five. It has three acts. Wilde is reported to have first drafted four and cut to three before opening, so you may meet a four-act version. This is not that one.
Now the first count. I added up every spoken word of the nine speaking characters, leaving out stage directions and two lines said in unison. That is seventeen thousand, eight hundred and forty-three words.
Jack speaks four thousand and five of them. Algernon speaks three thousand, nine hundred and sixty-eight. That is thirty-seven words apart, so the two liars are an almost perfect tie. Lady Bracknell has two thousand, nine hundred and three, and she is missing from all of Act Two.
Act One: Two Invented Men
Act One is a flat in Half-Moon Street, and the first entries go into the ledger almost at once. Jack is Ernest in town and Jack in the country. He invented a wicked younger brother named Ernest, so that he can escape his duties as a guardian.
Algernon has done the same thing in reverse. He invented an invalid friend called Bunbury, so that he can leave London, or dinner, whenever he likes. Then Algernon names the habit. A Bunburyist, he says, is someone who does this.
Entry three is a cigarette case. Its inscription comes from little Cecily to her dear Uncle Jack, and Jack says Cecily is his aunt, who lives at Tunbridge Wells. Entry four is Shropshire. Jack says that is his county, then admits the house is somewhere else. Algernon says he has already Bunburied all over Shropshire. The house is in Hertfordshire.
Entry five is a lie that Jack tells by saying nothing. Gwendolen loves him, and she loves the name Ernest even more. Jack never tells her the truth. He says the name does not suit him, and he would like to be christened.
Lady Bracknell’s Questions
Then Lady Bracknell interviews Jack, notebook in hand. Do you smoke? Yes, and she approves, because a man should have an occupation. How old are you? Twenty-nine. His income is between seven and eight thousand a year, in investments, and he has a house at number one forty-nine Belgrave Square, on the unfashionable side.
Everything passes until the parents. Jack says he has lost both. Then he tells the truth, which is the one honest answer in the whole act. He was found in a handbag in the cloak-room at Victoria Station, on the Brighton line.
Lady Bracknell says to lose one parent may be a misfortune, but to lose both looks like carelessness. She will not let her daughter marry into a cloak-room. Keep the handbag in mind. It is the only true thing in the ledger so far, and it is the one nobody believes.
The Word Counter
Here are my counts for the whole play, stage directions included. The word Bunbury, in all its forms, appears fifty-six times. The word Ernest appears eighty-two times, thirty-one in Act One and forty-four in Act Two.
And the word earnest, the one in the title? Twice. Once in Act One, when Algernon says Jack looks like the most earnest person he ever saw. And once in the very last line. In between, it is never said.
Now the word liar. It appears once, in Act Two, and it is Algernon saying it to Jack. The word truth appears ten times, six of them in Act One. One of those is my favorite line in the ledger. Algernon says the truth is rarely pure and never simple.
Act Two: The Arrival
Act Two moves to the garden at the Manor House, and the ledger fills up. Algernon turns up as Ernest, with three portmanteaus, a dressing-case, two hat-boxes and a large luncheon-basket. That is entry six.
Jack comes in dressed in black. He tells the whole household that his brother Ernest has died of a severe chill in Paris. He even names a telegram from the manager of the Grand Hotel. That is entry seven, and it fails the moment Cecily says the brother is waiting in the dining-room.
Entry eight is Algernon telling Cecily about his poor invalid friend Bunbury. Meanwhile Cecily has her own invention, which is not a lie, but a diary. In it she and Ernest have been engaged for three months, accepted on the fourteenth of February and broken off on the twenty-second of March. She even wrote his letters herself.
The Tea Table
The best scene in the play is a tea. Gwendolen arrives, and she and Cecily compare diaries. Each is engaged to Ernest Worthing. Each has the proposal written down. Gwendolen’s came yesterday at half-past five, and Cecily’s came ten minutes ago.
Their politeness turns into war, with sugar and cake as weapons. Cecily puts four lumps of sugar in Gwendolen’s tea, and gives her cake when she asked for bread and butter. Then both men walk in, and the two women learn that Jack is called John and Algernon is called Algernon.
Jack finally tells the truth. He says he has no brother Ernest, and never had one. In my reading, this is the dullest sentence in the play, and it makes everyone furious. The women leave. The men sit down and eat the muffins. The word muffin comes up eighteen times, and never once in Act One, where the cucumber sandwiches run out.
Who Knows What
Before Act Three, here is a quick map of who believes Ernest exists. At the end of Act One, Gwendolen thinks Jack is Ernest. Cecily, Miss Prism and Dr. Chasuble think there is a wicked brother called Ernest in London.
At the end of Act Two, both women know the name belonged to neither man. Jack and Algernon are the only two characters who knew the whole truth from the start. That is why the play can leave them alone at the tea table, arguing about muffins.
The ledger shows something else. Five entries sit in Act One, three in Act Two and three in Act Three. In my count, the lying peaks before the garden, and the consequences peak in it.
Act Three: The Reckoning
In Act Three the women forgive them, but only on one condition. The men must be christened, and both must take the name Ernest. The plan collapses when Lady Bracknell arrives, because she has come to take Gwendolen home.
Algernon is questioned about Bunbury, and entry nine goes in. He says Bunbury is dead, and then fumbles the cause. In his words, Bunbury was quite exploded. That is the end of Bunbury, killed by the man who invented him.
Lady Bracknell, who was horrified by a handbag, is now charmed by a number. Cecily has a fortune of a hundred and thirty thousand pounds in the Funds. Her grandfather’s will keeps her from coming of age until she is thirty-five, which Lady Bracknell calls a very attractive age.
Entry ten is Cecily’s small one. She is really eighteen, but admits to twenty at evening parties, and Lady Bracknell says no woman should be quite accurate about her age.
Entry eleven is Lady Bracknell’s own. Lord Bracknell believes his daughter is at a university lecture, and Lady Bracknell says she has never undeceived him on any question.
The Handbag
Now the handbag, which appears seventeen times, and only in Acts One and Three. In Act One Jack explained that he was found in a handbag at Victoria Station, and Lady Bracknell refused to let her daughter marry into a cloak-room. In Act Three she turns to Miss Prism and asks where the baby is.
Miss Prism lost a baby twenty-eight years ago. She put her novel in the pram and the baby in the handbag. The handbag is brought down, and she knows it by the stain and her initials on the lock.
Jack is the baby. He is Algernon’s elder brother, so the brother he invented was real all along. The Army Lists show their father was General Ernest John Moncrieff, so his name is Ernest too.
Jack says that he has just learned that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth. Gwendolen answers that she can forgive him, because she feels sure he is going to change.
My Reading
Here is my reading, so treat it as an opinion. The lies in this play are not the point. The point is that nobody minds the lie. Gwendolen says that in matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing. The play agrees with her. Every liar ends the play engaged, and the only thing anyone is ever short of is cucumbers.
I also found one small slip in the ledger. In Act One Jack says he is twenty-nine. In Act Three Lady Bracknell says the baby was lost twenty-eight years ago. I don’t know whether Wilde meant it, so I am only pointing it out.
Final tally. Eleven deceptions, two invented people, one handbag, and a title word said twice.
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